by J. E. Gurley
“God help us,” Tio Mataskelekele said.
Mataskelekele was a minister at the International Christian Church. Akuna hoped his word carried some weight with God. They would need it. With communications out, the Prime Minister had dispatched boats to the other islands, but what little help they could offer would be too late in coming.
The sun had risen bright and beautiful after two days of rain, but instead of a city basking in its warm, tropical glow, its austere light revealed a chaotic scene of mass exodus. The streets were jammed with cars and people on foot trying to leave the city. To where did not matter, only escape. The bay was astir with yachts and fishing boats loaded to the gunwales with people. Many would sink in the rough seas as soon as they left the shelter of the bay. A small Cessna flew overhead so overloaded it barely skimmed the treetops. People were in a panic. If they knew how little firepower the VMF had to resist the Kaiju, they would have been even more frightened.
Akuna lined his handful of men along the edge of Teoma Street. The heady scent of frangipani and gardenia filled the freshly scrubbed air, fighting the exhaust fumes of automobiles, but no one stopped to smell the air. Akuna’s men waved their arms directing traffic, but their heads faced northwest, the direction from which the Kaiju would come.
The center of the island was a tangle of shrubs and dense growths of whitewood, kaori, banyan, and banana trees. Dozens of small streams and rivers ran to the sea from the slopes of the mountains and hills. He could see the hulk of Mount McDonald to the north. At twenty-one-hundred feet, it was the highest point on the island. Mount Tafa Ki Malao and Mount Putuet were smaller at seven-hundred and fifteen hundred feet respectively. Neither the island’s rugged terrain nor the mountains would present a challenge to the nine-hundred-foot juggernaut bearing down on the city like a runaway freight train.
He caught sight of the Kaiju as it crossed a ridge near Mount Putuet near the old manganese mine. Its legs concealed by the trees, it glided across the landscape like a dark shadow cast by a cloud. Its darkness was a black hole absorbing the sunlight. With its hundred-foot stride, it hadn’t even gotten its feet wet crossing the Epule River. The creature was over ten miles away and still dominated the skyline. It would be striding through the center of the city in half an hour.
His first thought as saw its entire bulk was of a gigantic, ebony cockroach designed by alien minds striding across the kitchen floor, except this cockroach walked on twelve legs. Razor-sharp protuberances lined the edges of each body segment. A nest of writhing tentacles ringed its enormous gaping maw. It was a horror from hell, a creature dredged from the darkest nightmares of a demented mind. He wondered if its appearance was a matter of design or purposefully constructed to strike fear into the hearts and minds upon the peoples upon which it had been unleashed.
The Kaiju itself wasn’t the worst of their problems. The air around the creature was aswarm with the black specks of hundreds of Wasps. They could reach the city in minutes, but they were busy harvesting the people in the outlying homesteads and farms. To the alien creatures, humans, cattle, pigs, or monkeys – it made no difference. All were fodder to fuel the creature’s inexhaustible appetite. He sighed with relief when the creature disappeared from sight behind another ridge, breaking the compelling spell it had cast over him. He knew it was still moving inexorably toward him, but better to fear the unseen disaster than be mesmerized by its gargantuan, ebony hulk.
An occasional shot rang out from the edge of the city as homeowners and ranchers wielding shotguns and hunting rifles tried to fend off the flying Wasps, but there were simply too many of them. He was torn between sympathy for the islanders’ plight and grateful relief for the few extra minutes it gave the crowd milling around him to escape. The Kaiju reappeared, this time only a few miles from town striding along the Teouma River that emptied into the sea east of the city. A few minutes later, the louder reports of the mortar firing reached him from the village of Lololima just south of Lololima Falls. He glanced back at the crowded road and knew evacuation was impossible. The snarl of traffic and the clot of frightened people clogged the streets. If they had another four hours, it still would not be enough time.
“Get off the streets,” he yelled at the crowd. “Hide in the buildings.” He knew the flimsy buildings would not offer much protection, but it was better than standing in the open. When hardly anyone paid attention to him, he fired a burst from his M16 into the air to get their attention. “Hide!” he yelled to the startled crowd.
People scattered. They abandoned their vehicles and array of pushcarts and bundles, and raced to any shelter they could find. Some of his squad looked as if they wanted to join them. To their credit, they remained at their posts. The ponderous footsteps of the enormous creature shook the earth. Minutes later, the mortars went silent, their crews wiped out by the Wasps. The creature skirted the edge of the foothills of Mount McDonald and veered southwest toward the airport, as if destroying any method of escape was foremost in its alien mind.
He cringed with horror as a Gulfstream G450 twin-engine jet lifted from the runway. The pilot had made a serious error in judgment or in timing by taking off into the southwestern winds directly at the Kaiju. The pitch of the twin Rolls Royce Tay MK 611 engines increased to a shrill whine, as the pilot revved them to maximum speed to aid in banking the aircraft away from the creature. The Gulfstream had a sixteen-passenger capacity, but Akuna imagined the pilot had packed as many people into the craft as possible. It banked too slowly. At first, he thought the Gulfstream was going to crash into the Kaiju, but the pilot fought the controls for every ounce of lift the wings and engines could provide. The jet cleared the creature’s back by fifty feet.
It wasn’t enough. One of the Kaiju’s hundred-foot-long tentacles lashed out from around its maw and struck one of the jet’s wings, as one would swat an annoying buzzing mosquito. The right wing snapped off. The pilot sent all the power to the remaining left engine, but the jet veered left and lost altitude. It disappeared behind a ridge. Seconds later, the report of an explosion reached him, followed by a plume of black smoke rising behind the ridge. A handful of Wasps broke away from the creature to investigate the crash and search for bodies. The Kaiju continued its march toward the city.
Akuna had no time to mourn their deaths or wonder if any of his friends were among the passengers. Wasps descended on Port Vila. The foremost creatures flew over the city and attacked the boats in the bay or passing beyond the edges of it. A second dark swarm of Wasps flew toward the airport. The remainder swept down from the sky and attacked the people who still hadn’t reached shelter. The sight reminded him of WWII dive-bombers attacking war ships. He had seen photos of Wasps, but these were different. Four oddly shaped lumps protruded from the Wasps’ abdomens. As he tried to decipher what function they served, a Wasp flew six feet over his head and landed beside a woman clutching her young child to her breast. He smelled the sickening alien stench of the creature as it passed, like a flying abattoir. To his horror, the four lumps disengaged from the Wasp, extended four legs, and dropped to the ground.
The new creatures were tan in color, the size of small dogs, but very angular, almost pointed at one end. The rear legs were longer than the front legs and much thicker. He saw why, as the creature leaped into the air like a giant flea, covered the ten feet distance to the woman in one hop, and landed in front of her. The other three joined it, surrounding her.
The woman’s scream broke his reverie. He rushed at the Fleas, firing his M16 wide to avoid hitting her. Most of his bullets missed, but several of them struck the creature to her right, killing it. He was surprised with the ease with which it died, but then realized their numbers, not their armor, was their strong point. If each Wasp carried four Fleas, there were thousands of them. He aimed carefully at the one between him and her and fired. His short burst ripped the Flea in half.
“Run!” he yelled at her as he struggled to replace his empty clip. He looked up as Seimata Kaltack joined him, firin
g his M1 at the other two Fleas. He killed one as it hopped at him. Akuna took out the fourth one.
“What the hell are they?” Kaltack yelled.
“I don’t know,” Akuna answered.
Hundreds of the Fleas hopped along the streets pursuing fleeing people. One man was down with three of the creatures on his back. With no neck, they drove their entire body forward, stabbing into his flesh with their sharp heads until he was dead. A long tongue emerged from their tiny mouths, licking up the blood. A Wasp swooped in to pick up and carry away the corpse, while the Fleas sought another victim. Fleas and Wasps formed a highly efficient killing machine.
“We can’t kill them all,” Kaltack said. “There are too many.”
“We can try,” he replied.
His fear slowly dissipated at the sight of the slaughter around him, replaced by a growing rage. He attacked the closest Wasp. His bullets found one of the creature’s eyes, smashing it. It trilled loudly, as yellow ichor flowed down its face. He slammed a fresh magazine into the M16, pulled the bolt to send a round into the chamber, and began firing at the Wasp’s head. Kaltack joined him.
His and Kaltack’s combined firepower did some damage. The Wasp backed away, fluttered its wings, and tried to fly away, but Akuna has having none of it. He concentrated his fire at the creature’s open mouth. Yellow blood began dripping from its mouth and showered the street as it shook its head. Somewhere among the hail of bullets he poured down its throat, one struck the brain. The creature’s four hind legs folded, and it sat awkwardly on the ground. It attempted to crawl away using its front legs, but only moved in a circle when its hind legs refused to move, like a fly swatted and partially paralyzed by a fly swatter, refusing to die. Avoiding the thrashing talons on the tips of its front legs, Akuna walked up to it and fired a short burst into its remaining intact eye. The creature shuddered once and collapsed onto the street, dead.
Akuna’s sense of self-satisfaction quickly evaporated when he saw the dozens of dead or dying people carted away by a steady stream of Wasps. A horde of Fleas darted among them, licking up pools of blood from the streets and sidewalks. The Fleas died easily enough, but he had used two clips of ammo to kill one Wasp out of the hundreds attacking the city. It was a numbers game and the numbers were stacked against him. There wasn’t enough ammunition on the entire island to make a dent in the swarm of alien creatures.
The machineguns on the Parliament Building ceased firing one by one as their crews succumbed to the Wasps or Fleas. His squad was down two men. Regevanu and Mataskelekele were dead. He couldn’t see Barbier, but heard his M1 barking from around the corner. He heard very little small arms fire from the other squads. During the battle, the Kaiju had gotten closer. Windows shattered and the pavement cracked with each footfall of the Kaiju’s twelve legs, a staccato of tremors that strengthened in intensity with every step the giant took.
“We can’t stay here,” Kaltack said. “It’s useless.”
Akuna looked around them. There were few living people in sight. Wasps dominated the sky and Fleas commanded the ground. Kaltack was right.
“Okay,” he replied reluctantly. His hot blood demanded more alien blood to sate his anger, but his senses pleaded for self-preservation.
They took shelter beneath a bus. From his low vantage point, he watched Wasp legs appear and disappear, as well as human legs vanishing from sight as Wasps took them. Fleas hopped in and out of view, attacking people in groups. He heard fewer screams as the crowd thinned.
The bus bounced around him. His fear of crushing by one of the bus’s tires almost forced him from his hiding place, but dying beneath a bus’s wheels seemed preferable to the ignominious death of becoming Kaiju food. He remained where he was, as an unnatural darkness replaced the early morning daylight. One of the Kaiju’s hundred-foot long, boxcar-sized legs stabbed into a house a block away, skewering it with the knife-edged appendage. One the next step, the house exploded into shards of wood and concrete as the leg yanked it into the air, only to shower down moments later as debris. The Kaiju’s writhing tentacles wormed their way into buildings and along the streets, probing for human prey as a woodpecker digs for insects. Tentacles withdrew with struggling people grasped in their deadly embrace destined for the creature’s enormous open maw. He had thought the stench of the Wasps was bad. The Kaiju reeked of rotten flesh and coagulated blood. It stank of musty seaweed and sun-bleached fish.
A tentacle wrenched the bus from atop him and flung it aside like a child’s toy. It crashed two blocks away amid the rubble of a school building. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the belly of the creature. The Kaiju was as large as an aircraft carrier. Segmented ebony plates serrated like saw teeth along the edges covered its body. The head sat at the end of a short neck, but the head didn’t have to move far. The tentacles around its mouth brought food to the creature’s mouth. Three pairs of legs attached to the creature’s forward section, while the remaining three pairs sat toward the creature’s rear.
Akuna expected one of the legs to grind him into the pavement, but the Kaiju passed over him like a low-flying dirigible – exposing him to the Wasps and Fleas. He froze, hoping they would ignore him, but the creatures’ vision, hearing, and sense of smell, developed by the alien bioengineers to seek out living flesh for the Kaijus, were too acute to miss a hapless human lying on the street. Several of the creatures circled the sky above him and Kaltack like vultures waiting for him to gasp out his last breath, but unlike vultures, they preferred live prey.
Kaltack’s eyes grew wide with fright as Fleas began converging on their location. He stared at Akuna while raising his M1 and aiming at them. Akuna mouthed a wordless ‘No’ and shook his head, but his friend and fellow soldier had witnessed too many gruesome deaths, seen too much destruction. He looked away, rose to his knees, and fired into the nearest group of Fleas. As if his shot had been a signal, the Wasps stopped circling and hovered above them like nine-foot hummingbirds. Kaltack rose to his feet and continued firing. He killed two Fleas and howled in triumph. Unfortunately, he ignored the Wasps above him. Two of them dropped straight down at him. Each seized a shoulder with its deadly talons and lifted him into the air. His agony did not end there. Whether by purpose or simply a dispute over captured prey, the Wasps moved apart, ripping Kaltack in half.
His friend’s blood raining down over him was the last straw for Akuna. Driven half-mad by rage, he raised his M16 and emptied the magazine into one of the Wasps that had slaughtered his friend. The Wasp tumbled from the sky and landed a few feet from him. The creature was dead, but killing it hadn’t been enough to assuage his mounting fury. He reloaded and fired two more short bursts into its dead eyes.
As he stood there in the street, gulping breaths of air as his rage drained away, a shadow fell over him, reminding him how exposed he was. Reality set in and replaced wrath with caution. He wasn’t certain why he wasn’t dead already. The Fleas, momentarily distracted by another survivor choosing that moment to run from cover, ignored him. Akuna raced across the street to the rubble of a demolished building and cowered beneath a section of collapsed roof. A bellowing wail emitted by the Kaiju drew the Wasps away from the area and toward the city. The Wasps hovered a few feet from the ground, as the Fleas leaped up and reattached themselves to the Wasps’ abdomens, and then flew away.
He glanced toward the city. The Kaiju had waded through downtown, a giant among pygmies, leaving a football-field wide swath of devastation. Fires started by severed gas lines erupted in a dozen buildings. With no fire brigade to extinguish them, the fires would quickly sweep through the rest of town, wiping it from the face of the earth like a fiery tsunami. The Kaiju now stood on its hind sextet of legs, using its front legs to hammer at the sides of the seven-story Grand Hotel. Each thrust of a pointed appendage ripped massive chunks of masonry from the building’s façade. Like gutting a fish, within minutes the interior of the building lay exposed. White linen fluttered and floated around the creature like da
ndelion seeds blown by a puff of wind. People too frightened to evacuate promptly became food, as the massive writhing mouth tentacles snatched them from their rooms. It reminded Akuna of a giant alien spiny echidna ripping apart a termite mound and lapping up the exposed tasty termite treats with its long sticky tongue. The sight sickened him.
The Wasps, drawn to the creature by its feeding call, dove among the ruins like Brahminy Kites, harvesting people exposed by the creature’s patch of destruction or driven from their hiding places by the heat of the raging inferno. Fleas swarmed over the rubble like rats. It became a hellish choice for survivors – roast in the flames or face the almost equally certain death from the Wasps, Fleas, or the Kaiju’s probing tentacles.
The Kaiju, its destruction of the hotel and most of Port Vila complete, waded into Vila Bay toward the resort bungalows on Iririki Island. It scattered and sank ships and boats still moored to the docks or floating at anchor. With three strides, it was on the island, smashing wooden bungalows as if they were toothpick and glue constructions created for a school arts and crafts exhibit. The long tentacles lashed out at fleeing vessels, sending them to the bottom of the bay. Then, it turned back toward the main island. Akuna realized his hunch was right. The creature was methodically destroying any means of escape before settling down to wipe all trace of human life from the island.
He didn’t know if Efate was the first island of all the islands of Vanuatu to suffer the creature’s wrath or if his island had the bad luck of lying in the creature’s path to more densely populated areas, such as Australia. His people, his friends, had been an opportune snack, a quick bite before lunch. He checked his weapon. He had half a clip left and no more ammo in his ammo pouch. Boxes of ammunition remained in the barrack’s building near the airport, but he doubted the building still existed. He had even more doubt about his chances of reaching it alive.